As soon as I saw the first few lines on the folded and wrinkled sheet of paper, I figured the rest was tongue-in-cheek: IF YOU WANT TO FIND OUT YOUR GIRL’S AGE, There was a…
Category: Games
As soon as I saw the title “Four and Twenty Blackbirds,” the little ditty started playing in my head: “Sing a song of sixpence, A pocket full of rye, Four and twenty blackbirds Baked in…
Remember Rubik’s Cube, the puzzle with so many twists and turns that it seemed maddingly impossible to solve? I remember how people would wrack their brains trying to get the colors to line up – their…
I saw the chicken first. I was perusing the tables at an auction house when I came across a game board with a large brown hen. It looked like something out of a carnival or…
Guess what retirement plan is inside this box
Posted in Games, and Guess what it is
You couldn’t miss the sunshine-yellow box on the auction table. Maybe that’s what the maker had in mind when it chose such a brilliant color and a collage of leisure activities that reminded you of Florida,…
I can’t remember the last time I picked up a yo-yo – I was never very good at controlling the thing – and it’s not often that I see them at auction. The last time…
I came to the Native American slot machine first, but it was the big red head of another machine on a table just behind it that pulled me in. I had seen the array of arcade…
1968 inlay puzzle of a black child drawn as his natural self
Posted in Children, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and Games
The images of the African American boy were partly hidden beneath a black cloth doll on the auction table. I immediately moved the doll aside so I could get a closer look at the images…
Vintage puzzle games that make you wanna holler
Posted in collectibles, and Games
I tried my hardest to roll the BB-sized silver balls into the round grooves on the face of the card. There were six tiny balls, and they were stubbornly rolling around in all directions or…
Guess the new function of this Fli-Back paddle
Posted in Games, Guess what it is, and Toys
I instantly recognized the shape of the flat wooden item on the auction table, but its current function was far different from what I remembered. I flipped it over and saw the familiar cowboy on…